Can a caterpillar speak butterfly?
No. Not really…
People who have no idea what you are going through or what you have survived will have no understanding of your feelings or how you are dealing with your life and your issues at the moment.
In fact nobody can ever understand what you are going through.
It’s not your job to try to get them to understand you. That is just going to make you more frustrated.
Those people are caterpillars and you are a butterfly.
You have gone through a metamorphosis that they haven’t gone through. They have their own journey to go on so they are still crawling on the ground while you are flying in the sky.
Don’t let them pull you back to the ground because they don’t understand what it means to fly. They feel threatened by the heights you are reaching and will do everything to feel more comfortable with themselves by keeping you at their level.
Don’t let them!
Rise above that and keep flying.
Let the caterpillars stay where they are.
It is no business of yours how they feel about you and it is an opportunity for you to really grasp how far you have come.
You worked so hard to get where you are today and even if it’s not always easy, please keep flying.
Be the amazing survivor that you are.

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Happy Easter and a good Pesach to everyone!
As usual, when Pesach (Passover) comes along, so does the conversation about freedom. During Pesach we discuss what it meant for the Jewish people to be free from slavery in Egypt and we compare it to our lives now.
The question is are we really free?
We may not be actual slaves although many people express that they feel like slaves to their kids, to their partners and to their jobs. Are we free to spend quality time on our own without limitations?
Are we free because we have a lot of material things or are we slaves to our phones and our possessions (and what it takes to pay off the debts that those possessions create)?
Are we free to express ourselves without being labeled or put into a box by stigma?

We can focus on all the reasons that we are not free or we can learn to appreciate all the reasons that we are free. So many of us are free from hunger and cold. We are free to be the person that we want to be if we stop worrying about what everyone thinks of us and we stop worrying about pleasing other people.

We need to create a space to be free.
Whether it is just going outside and taking a deep breath or going for a walk and watching the world go by.
Pause to appreciate what you have.
Celebrate the little things that make your life a bit better (thanks Haagen Dazs salted caramel ice cream).
Remember how far you have come and how truly fabulous you really are – even if nobody can see it and no one acknowledges it.
You are amazingly perfectly imperfect just the way you are!

Today we celebrate Youth Day.
And while we actually do celebrate the freedom that it represents (and enjoy a day off work and school) may we never forget the stories behind June the 16th – the Soweto uprising.
It took bravery for people to stand up for what they believed in. It took guts for the ‘small’ to fight the ‘big’.
Those people changed our history.
This week, we were once again faced with the result of hatred in the shootings in Orlando, USA. As devastating as it was, the uprising of people afterwards – standing together as one with strong belief in good – was absolutely amazing.

Most of us are blessed with a freedom that perhaps the precious generation didn’t have.
Let us not take that for granted.
Never let anybody oppress you. Whether it is leaders, people in your work place, bullies or even family members. Don’t ever allow anybody to belittle you or tell you that you are less worthy or not good enough.
Don’t be small!
You may not have the ability, or the bravery to take on the ‘big guys’ but you can still be the best person that you can be despite your circumstances. Rise above those circumstances!
Be wonderful even if nobody supports you in doing it.
Do great things even if nobody recognises what you do.
Do things because they make you happy and not for reward.
Find fulfillment in whatever you need to do and celebrate your freedom to be different.

Friedrich Nietzsche said “the surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.”

I am smack bang in the middle of Pesach (Passover) and I feel like I am drowning in a sea of matzah and endless cooking.
But today between cooking and working, I made time to go to the Art of the Brick exhibition by Nathan Sawaya.
(If you have a chance to go and see this incredible exhibition, please go and see it. It is currently in Johannesburg, London, Philadelphia and Oshkosh, Wisconsin)

Besides the fact that the art is amazing, the story behind the art was far more profound for me – and especially meaningful during Pesach when we celebrate freedom.
The artist, Nathan Sawaya was a frustrated lawyer who allowed himself to be free by being creative and creating a new career for himself in the process.
He describes one of his works entitled “Gray”:

“Taking a leap is hard. I used to be a lawyer. There was nothing wrong with being a lawyer, but I always knew there was another me, an Artist Me, lurking inside. Then one day I decided to let the Artist in me out, and I never looked back.”

What would happen if we got out of our self imposed jails and allowed ourselves to be free?
Could we be who we are meant to be and let go of the person that we are expected to be?
I have a feeling that most people have the most amazing abilities that they keep locked inside, jailed by fear.
How awesome would it be if there were more people in the world like Nathan Sawaya?
Imagine the possibilities….

I touched down safely from my wonderful trip and went straight into the hectic and overwhelming preparations for Passover. In my exhausted state, I cooked way too much food (oh wait, I always cook way too much food) and sat down wearily at the Seder table to discuss freedom.
It was really easy for me to talk about freedom because I had just had 2 weeks of freedom away from work and family responsibility. The discussion turned to how horrible it must have been to be a slave and how lucky we are to be free today. My younger son piped up that he was not free at all because he lived a life governed by rules at home and high expectations at school.
We tried to explain to him that there is a big difference between being enslaved and having to do homework. He agreed with that fact but would not back down on his argument that he was far from free.
Truthfully, although we live in an environment (fortunately) where we have relative freedom of choices, movement and speech and nobody ruling over us and beating us with a stick at every wrong turn, there may as well be a slave master watching over us.
Because we seem to be our own slave masters – we constantly beat ourselves up.
Ideas of never being good enough, never having enough, not being able to please others, not living up to others’ expectations of us, putting far too much pressure on ourselves, aiming for perfection and never finding happiness in the moment that we are in – these are all forms of ‘slavery’.
We are never going to be free until we allow ourselves to soar – to be true to ourselves and free from expectation, to let go of perfection and just enjoy the process. To enjoy the moment instead of wishing for bigger things. To be grateful for what we have rather than thinking that we will be happy if we had more.
You have the ability to be free – if you choose it.
Nobody else is going to set you free except for yourself.
Right now, right this moment, take in a deep breath and free yourself from all of those unnecessary stressors.
You will be amazed at how much more you can do when you give up the shackles – and throw away that big stick please.

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I am still on the subject of Pesach (Passover) because I am living and breathing it at the moment, not to mention the time I have spent so far crunching through matzah.
Passover is a celebration of freedom so I have really been thinking over the past few days about my own freedom.
On the surface, it seems very simple. I am free. I am not a slave in Egypt. I live in a country where human rights and freedom of speech are important aspects of living. I am a woman living in the 21st century where woman and men are equal. I don’t owe the bank much money. So I am free. Right? Wrong!
The more I thought about it, the more I realised that I don’t feel free at all. And when I spoke to other people about it, they said that they felt the same way that I did.

Nelson Mandela said when he was leaving prison, “As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn’t leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I’d still be in prison.”

We are slaves to our kids and to our family’s expectations of us, we are imprisoned by our own negative attitudes and poor self image. We are chained to time and deadlines and expectations. We are most definitely slaves to our phones and computers, to social networks and the fear of missing out on important information like what our friends ate for dinner (or where they went on holiday that will always be more exciting and more adventurous than our own lives).
In a world where we are always on the go, and continually surrounded by information and marketing, we are not free.
We imprison ourselves and we do it by choice. Well I think it is our choice. And truthfully, I’m not sure what the solution is. But there has to be one and I think that it is different for each person as we are all individuals. We have to choose to do things differently.

Do something different and discover your own freedom before you burn out. Before it is too late.
Because you are worth so much more than just being a prisoner for the rest of your life.

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As much as I love and embrace my religion, when it comes to this time of the year – Passover, I seriously question my sanity.
We literally turn our houses upside down, clean every nook and cranny and then change everything in our kitchen for one week. And when it is all over, we change everything back again.
The truth is that I take it totally overboard. Because that is what I do, I like control and order. It makes me happy.
So there I was cleaning away and thinking that while we spend so much time cleaning and getting our houses in order, how much time do we spend getting our souls and our minds in order.
Do we ever do anything to cleanse our souls? Mostly we don’t because we are so busy just trying to survive life and get everything done that we forget about nurturing ourselves, we forget about the simple things that make us happy.
We forget to throw away all the negativity and all the hurt that we carry with us wherever life takes us.
We tend to wait until we reach some kind of crisis before we wake up and say, oh! I should have done something for me. Or I should have nurtured myself rather than pushed myself to a point of burn out.
Just like I waited way too long to defrost my freezer and last night I had to contend with huge chunks of ice (which shouldn’t really bother an ice skater should it?), if you wait too long before clearing out your mind of that build up of negativity, you are going to have deal with the huge build up of issues and it is going to take much longer to “defrost”

So whether you are celebrating the festival of Passover, which represents freedom or Easter, full of the joys of “spring”, or you find any other reason to celebrate, choose to take some time for “cleaning out”.
Let go, feel free and start to move forwards with a new attitude!
You have so much more to offer yourself if you allow it!